F 



OLD HOUSES IN FARMINGTON 



AN 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT T.HE. 



Hnnual flfteeting 



The Village Library Company 



FARMINGTON, CONN. 



OAay i , i8g^ 



BY JULIUS GAY 



Hartfori Conn. 
Press of The Case, Lockwood & Brainatd Company 

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Glass ELKLl 



F4fifc5 



OLD HOUSES IN FARMINGTON 



AN 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



Hnnual flfoeetino 



The Village LibraryCompany 



FARMINGTON, CONN. 



cM?i' /. i8o=> 



BY JULIUS GAY 



I Iai; i FORD, Conn. 

Press of The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company 

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ADDRESS. 



Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of 
Farmington : 

I have been requested to speak this evening of the old 
houses of Farmington and of some of the people who 
lived in them. If my paper be not very profound with 
great events and much learning, it may perhaps none the 
less, for a passing hour, revive the fast-fading picture of 
our ancestors, their virtues and their foibles. 

In the winter of 1639, when the town of Hartford had 
been founded three and one-half years, and Windsor and 
Wethersfield about the same time, all three towns began 
to think their broad acres too limited, and applied to the 
( ieneral Court " for some enlargement of accommodation." 
A committee was appointed to view the valley of the 
Tunxis and report on the 20th of February, but Windsor 
was busy building a bridge and a meeting house, and 
their neighbors of Wethersfield objected to the wintry 
weather ; so the Court added to the committee Capt. John 
Mason, who had recently rid the colony of 600 or 700 
Pequots, and who brought the Court on the 15th of June 
following to order the Particular Court "to conclude the 
conditions for the planting of Tunxis." 

Five years thereafter, in 1645, the village of Tunxis 
Sepus, literally the village at the bend of the little river, 
became by legislative enactment the town of Farmington. 

The settlers found the natural features of the place 
much as we see them to-day. To the east of the main 
street their lots extended to the mountain, and on the 



west to the river, beyond which fertile meadows spread 
away to the western hills, undishgured for more than one 
hundred years by divisional fences, a broad panorama of 
waving grain and green corn fields. 

The land was indeed owned in severalty, but annually 
the proprietors voted on what day in October they would 
use it for pasturage, and on what day in April all must 
remove their flocks and herds. Access to this common 
field was through the North Meadow Gate just west of 
the Catholic church, or through the South Meadow Gate 
near the Pequabuc stone bridge. Along the main street 
houses began to rise, log huts at first, each provided by 
law with a ladder reaching to the ridge to be examined 
every six months by the chimney-viewers. In 171 1 the 
town granted fourscore acres of land to encourage the 
erection of a saw-mill, but long before this time frame 
houses had been built, the sides covered with short clap- 
boards split from logs. The oldest house of which we 
know the date of erection was built in 1700 by John 
Clark and stood until 1880 on the east side of High street, 
a little south of Mrs. Barney's. It had a leanto roof, the 
upper story much projecting, and ornamented with con- 
spicuous pendants. Another, the last of this style, but 
with modern covering, still stands about seventy-five rods 
further south. Within, a huge chimney with its enor- 
mous fire-place and ovens, filled a large part of the lower 
story, barring all convenient access to the interior of the 
house by the front door. But this sacred portal was sel- 
dom used except for weddings, funerals, and days of 
solemn thanksgiving. Later on appears the gambrel 
roof, which was the approved style until the time of the 
Revolution, and which is even now being revived under 
the name of the Old Colonial style. The huge chimney 
was at length divided into two, and moved out of the way 
of the front door, which now, with its polished brass 



5 

knocker, welcomed the approaching guest. An old house 
was seldom pulled down, but, moved to the rear, it made 
a kitchen for the newer structure, so that in time the 
house had as many styles of architecture and dates of 
erection as an English cathedral. 

As we first come in sight of the village, looking down 
upon it from the Hartford road, w r e see on the left one of 
our oldest houses long owned by Seth North, and built 
by his father Timothy or his grandfather Thomas. Mr. 
North did not take kindly to Puritan ways and never 
went to church, and so was universally known as " Sinner 
North." By the children he was pleased to be addressed 
in the most deferential manner as " Mr. Sinner." A most 
excellent authority, writing me about the old-time char- 
acter of the village, mentioned " its universally genteel 
ways, where everybody went to church except Sinner 
North." He was otherwise so much in accordance with 
modern ideas, that as he drew near his end, he ordered 
his body to be cremated, the place a lonely spot on the 
mountain between two rocks, and his friend, Adam Stew- 
art, chief cremator, who was to inherit the house for his 
kindly services. The civil authority, however, interposed 
and insisted on giving him what they deemed a Christian 
burial, but Adam Stewart got the house and it remained 
in the family many years. Nearly opposite stood in Rev- 
olutionary days the tavern of Samuel North, Jr. He, too, 
found his ways at variance with public opinion, bought, 
as he states it, his rum, sugar, tea, etc., in violation of the 
excise laws, in foreign parts, sold them for Continental 
money which proved worthless, and then was arrested on 
complaint of Thomas Lewis and Deacon Bull and lined 
;£ioo, the General Court declining to interfere. A little 
east of Mr. North's tavern stood the home of the Bird 
family from whom the hill derived its name. They have 
all long ago taken their flight to other towns, but our old- 



est men can easily remember the old house and the tragic 
end of Noadiah Bird, one of the last of the family who 
dwelt there. He was killed by an escaped lunatic on the 
night of Sunday, May 15, 1825, and the attempt to capture 
the lunatic resulted in the death of still another citizen. 
Descending the hill toward the west, we find on the cor- 
ner where the road, formerly called the road to Simsbury, 
runs northward, an old house once the home of Josiah 
North, and soon after his death in 1784, passing into the 
hands of Capt. Isaac Buck, who there lived and died at an 
advanced a«;e. But we must not linger on the site of the 
numerous houses that once looked over the valley from 
this hill, only at the foot we must stay a moment, though 
the little red house of Gov. Treadwell, just north of Poke 
brook and west of the big rock can only be remembered 
by the oldest of our people. Dr. Porter and Professor 
Denison Olmsted have both written worthy memorials 
of this eminent patriot, scholar, and Christian, but any 
exhaustive account of his public services must be a his- 
tory of the common school system of Connecticut, of the 
rise of foreign missions, and of much of the political his- 
tory of the State in the days of the Revolution. 

Crossing the brook and walking on the line of the old 
road which once ran where the south gate of the prem- 
ises of Mr. Barney stands, we come upon the house of 
Mr. Elijah L. Lewis, built for his grandfather Elijah in 
1790, the family living while it was building in an old 
house just west. Going southerly about thirty rods, we 
find on the corner next south of the North schoolhouse 
an old gambrel-roofed building with the end towards the 
street, and, in some far-off time, painted red. In 1752 
it was the property of Daniel Curtis, who, twenty years 
thereafter, sold it to his son Gabriel, who, after another 
twenty years, found it necessary to pay Capt. Judah 
Woodruff for new windows and for twenty days' labor in 



making the old structure habitable. Gabriel was a tanner 
and shoemaker, and in 1812 sold out to Frederick Andrus 
of the same trade, removing to Burlington, Vermont. 
The old house now became the noisy abode of journey- 
men shoemakers pounding leather under the direction of 
Mr. Andrus, thereafter known as Boss Andrus. He died 
in 1845, and the old house followed the usual dreary 
fortunes of a tenement house until, in 1882, we find it 
transformed by the subtle magic of a genial philanthropy, 
into the home of the Tunxis Library. Entertaining 
books fill every nook and corner, and antique furniture 
ranged around the vast old-time fireplace welcome readers 
young and old to a free and healthful entertainment. 

The old house next west, in 1752 the residence of 
Daniel Curtis, became thereafter the home of his son 
Solomon until he died in the army in 1776. In 1822, his 
heirs sold it to Frederick Andrus. The brick blacksmith 
shop and the white house adjoining were built soon after 
1823 by Charles Frost. The land on which the house 
next west stands was successively owned by the families 
of Norton, Rew, Judd, North, Smith, Whitmore, and 
DeWolf. I do not know who built the house. The Elm 
Tree Inn, where Phinehas Lewis once kept a famous tav- 
ern in revolutionary days, was built at various times. 

Just across the line on what was once the garden of 
Col. Gay and of three generations of his descendants, 
stood the little red shop now removed to the east side of 
the Waterville road just north of Poke brook. In 1795, 
Gabriel Curtis pays Capt. Judah Woodruff thirteen shil- 
lings for making for it a show window of thirty-two 
sashes (you can count them to-day if you like) for his son 
Lewis Curtis. Lewis advertises in the Connecticut Courant 
under date of 1799, "that he still continues to carry on 
the clock-making business, such as chime clocks that play 
a number of different tunes and clocks that exhibit the 



moon's age," etc., etc. A few steps down the hill west- 
ward bring us to the house built by Col. Fisher Gay in 
1766 and 1767, as appears by his ledger account with 
Capt. Woodruff. Col. Gay died early in the war, and 
some account of his public services can be found in H. P. 
Johnston's " Yale in the Revolution." 

Crossing the Waterville road, we come to the house 
opposite the Catholic Church, some parts of which are 
very old, the upper story of the front, however, having 
been built by the late Capt. Pomeroy Strong, soon after 
he bought the place in 1802. There was, as early as 
1645, one more house to the west, and then came the 
North Meadow gate. 

Returning now to the main street, the highway com- 
mittee in 1785 sold to Deacon Samuel Richards a strip 
out of the center of the highway, 26 feet wide, where, in 
the year following, he built the little shop in which traffic 
has been carried on successively by himself, Horace and 
Timothy Cowles, James K Camp, William Gay, and by 
his son, the present owner. Crossing the trolley track, 
we come upon the lot on which Daniel Curtis and his 
youngest son, Eleazer, had in 1783, as the deed reads, 
" mutually agreed to build a new house, .... and 
have large provision for the same." As they held it 
until 1794, it is probable that the present edifice was built 
by them. The next house south, where Mr. Abner Bid- 
well lived many years, was built by Deacon Samuel 
Richards in 1 792 as he records in his diary. 

I have spoken at some length in my last paper of this 
very worthy man and of his honorable service all through 
the revolutionary war. He was a Puritan of the Puritans, 
of the strictest integrity, kindly of heart, precise in man- 
ner, and with a countenance grave, not to say solemn, as 
became a deacon of the olden time. It is related that a 
small boy once sent to his store, was so overpowered by 



the gravity of his demeanor, that instead of asking for a 
pair of H and L hinges, he demanded of the horrified 
deacon a pair of archangels. He was the first postmaster 
of Farmington. On the 22d of July, 1 799, he advertises in 
the Connecticut Conrant : 

"Information. A post-office is established at Farmington for 
public accommodation. Samuel Richards, D. P. Master." 

The post-office was in the front hall of his house, and the 
half dozen letters that sometimes accumulated were 
fastened against the wall by tapes crossing each other in 
a diamond pattern. Five years later he records in his 
diary, " Kept the post-office, the proceeds of which were 
forty dollars, the one-half of which I gave to Horace 
Cowles for assisting me." The year after he obtained 
this lucrative office, instead of recording as heretofore the 
" continuation of distress in my temporal concerns," he 
deplores " my unthankfulness to God for his great good- 
ness to me. He is now trying me by prosperity." 

Immediately to the south stands a house which, before 
it was modernized by the late Mr. Leonard Winship, I 
remember as an old red, dilapidated structure, built by I 
know not whom. During the Revolution it was owned 
by Nehemiah Street, who, as I told you at the opening of 
this library, was fined along with many of the young 
people of the village, because, being assembled at his 
house, they refused to disperse until after nine o'clock at 
night. Mr. Street was frequently in similar trouble until 
disgusted with Puritan ways, he converted his goods 
into money and sought the freedom of the far West. 
Poor Nehemiah ! He soon found something worse than 
New England justice. Having invested his money in a 
drove of cattle, he sold them at Niagara Falls for six hun- 
dred pounds and fell in with a certain James Gale of 
( roshen, N. Y., who during the war commanded a plunder- 
2 



10 

ing party on Long- Island. This treacherous companion 
followed him from Niagara, and watching his opportunity 
while Mr. Street was bending over a spring of water by 
the roadside, struck him from behind with a tomahawk, 
and all the troubles of Nehemiah were ended. 

The land to the south once belonged to Rev. Samuel 
Hooker and remained in the family for four generations. 
Here stands the house where Major Hooker lived and 
died, and where, under a great elm tree in front, most 
genial of story-tellers, he was wont to sit of a summer 
evening and entertain his youthful friends. On this 
locality lived his father, Roger, and his grandfather, John. 
The latter was an assistant, a judge of the Superior Court 
and a man of note in the colony. Deacon Edward Hooker 
states that John Hooker and the Rev. Samuel Whitman 
were the only men in town that were saluted with the 
title of Mr. Others were known as Goodman or Gaffer. 
Mr. Whitman, the minister, he says, would always wait 
on the meeting-house steps for Mr. Hooker to come up 
and enter the house with him on Sabbath morning and 
share with him the respectful salutation of the people. 

Passing over the site where once stood the store of 
Samuel Smith, we come to the brick building erected in 
1 79 1 by Reuben S. Norton for a store, and which has 
since been used for divers purposes — store, tailor's shop, 
tenement house, post-office, church, groggery, and now, 
much enlarged, for a savings bank. Where my house 
stands, there stood, until I removed it in 1872, the very 
old house of Solomon Whitman. At the northeast corner 
was a square addition in which Miss Nancy Whitman 
presided over the post-office. I remember calling on the 
way from school and seeing through the small delivery 
window a huge dining-table covered with methodically- 
arranged letters and papers, and Miss Nancy, with gold- 
rimmed spectacles, bending over them. By this little 



II 

window, on a high shelf, to be out of reach of mischievous 
boys, stood a big dinner bell to call the postmistress, when 
necessary, from regions remote. Sometimes an advent- 
urous youth, by climbing on the back of a comrade, suc- 
ceeded in getting hold of the bell, but I never knew the 
same boy to repeat the offense. The next buildings are 
modern, so let us hurry on past the drugstore built some- 
where between 1813 and 181 8 by Elijah and Gad Cowles, 
and past the brick schoolhouse of Miss Porter, built by 
Major Cowles as a hotel to accommodate the vast con- 
course of travelers about to come to the village by the 
Farmington canal. Next comes a house built by Capt. 
Judah Woodruff for Thomas Hart Hooker in 1768, and 
very soon passing with the mill property into the posses- 
sion of the Demings. It was said during the days of 
fugitive slave laws to have been an important station on 
the underground railroad. It is best known to most of us 
as the residence of the late Samuel Deming, Esq., for 
many years a trial justice of the town, who fearlessly 
executed the law, whether his barns were burned, or 
whatever happened. We did not suffer from that curse 
of society, a lax administration of justice. The house 
next north of the post-office, now owned by Mr. Chauncey 
Deming, is said by the historian of the " Hart Family " to 
have belonged to Deacon John Hart, son of Capt. John, 
and if so, must be about 1 50 years old. The land was 
in the Hart family for five generations. Near the site 
of the post-office stood the house of Sergeant John Hart, 
son of Deacon Stephen, the immigrant, in which he 
with his family were burned on the night of Saturday, 
December 15, 1666, eight persons in all, only one son, 
afterward known as Capt. John, escaped, he being ab- 
sent at their farm in Nod, now Avon. From this point 
southward to the road down to the new cemetery, all 
the houses were destroyed by the great fire of July 21, 



12 

1864, including the long yellow house, just north of the 
present parsonage, which was the home of Rev. Timothy 
Pitkin during his sixty years' residence in our village. 
In my last paper I spoke of him as a patriot in the War of 
Independence. Of his high character and fervid elo- 
quence as pastor and preacher, we have the testimony of 
Dr. Porter in his " Half-Century Discourse." Professor 
( )lmsted says of him : " Do you not see him coming in at 
yonder door, habited in his flowing blue cloak, with his 
snow-white wig and tri-cornered hat of the olden time ? 
Do you not see him wending his way through the aisle to 
the pulpit, bowing on either side with the dignity and 
grace of the old nobility of Connecticut?" Immediately 
south of the road to the new cemetery stands the brick 
house built by Dr. Porter in 1808, the year of his mar- 
riage. We need not linger in our hasty progress to speak 
of the manifold virtues of one too well known to us all, 
and personally to many of us to need any eulogies here. 
The next house, now the residence of Mr. Rowe, was 
built by the Rev. Joseph Washburn on a lot purchased 
by him for that purpose in 1796. This healer of dissen- 
sions and much-loved pastor, after a settlement of eleven 
years, while seeking a mild southern climate in his failing 
health, died on the voyage on Christmas day, 1805, and 
was buried at sea. A few years later his house became 
the home of this library under the care of Deacon Elijah 
Porter. The large brick house on the top of the hill, 
with its imposing Roman facade looking southward, was 
built by Gen. George Cowles. The house on the corner, 
long the residence of Zenas Cowles, and now owned by 
Lieut.-Commander Cowles of the U. S. Navy, of a style 
of architecture much superior to all houses of the vil- 
lage of that time and perhaps of any time, is said to 
have been designed by an officer of Burgoyne's army sent 
here as a prisoner of war. The house next north of it 



13 

was bought by the late Richard Cowles in 1810, and must 
have been built by its 'former owner and occupant, Coral 
Case, or by his father, John Case. 

But it is high time that we crossed the street and com- 
menced our return. Nearly opposite the last-mentioned 
house stood the dwelling of the Rev. Samuel Hooker, 
second minister of Farmington, of whom I have formerly 
spoken. On this site, and probably in the same house, 
lived Roger Newton, his brother-in-law and the first 
pastor of this church. On the 13th of October, 1652, he 
stood up with six other Christian men, and they known 
in New England phraseology as the " Seven Pillars of 
the Church," seeking no authority from any intermediary 
church, consociation, bishop, priest, or earthly hierarch, 
but deriving their powers from the Word of God alone, 
as they understood it, declared themselves to be the First 
Church of Christ in Farmington. Probably during the 
pastorate of Mr. Newton there was no meeting-house. 
The Fast Day service of December, 1666, we know was 
held at the house of Sergeant John Hart, two days before 
the fire, and there is a carefully transmitted tradition, 
that the services of the Sabbath were held on the west 
side of the main street a little south of the Meadow Lane, 
and, therefore, probably at the house owned by Mrs. 
Sarah Wilson, sister of Rev. Samuel Hooker, where now 
stands the house of T. H. and L. C. Root. We hear of 
no meeting-house until 1672, when the record called the 
New Book begins, the " ould book " having been worn 
out and lost, and with it all account of the erection of the 
first house. In September, 1657, Mr. Newton was dis- 
missed from this church and went to Boston to take ship 
for England. What befel him by the way is narrated by 
John Hull, mint-master of Boston, he who coined the 
famous pine-tree shillings. After waiting on shipboard 
at Nantasket Roads six or eight days for a favorable 



14 

wind, the commissioners of the colonies and the Rev. 
John Norton sent for him, desiring a conference before 
his departure. The captain of the vessel and his associ- 
ates, of a race always superstitious, thinking this divine 
another Jonah and the cause of their detention, hurried 
him on shore, and, the wind immediately turning fair, 
sailed on their way without him. He remained in Boston 
several weeks, preaching for Rev. John Norton on the 
17th of October. After this date, we lose sight of him 
until his settlement in Milford on the 22d of August, 1660. 
Crossing the road formerly known as " the highway 
leading to the old mill place," and a century later as 
" Hatter's Lane," we come to the house next south of the 
old cemetery, owned and probably built by John Mix. 
He was commonly known as Squire Mix, a graduate of 
Yale, an officer of the Revolution, ten years Judge of 
Probate, thirty-two years town clerk, and twenty-six years 
a representative to the General Assembly. He was, as I 
am told by those who knew him well, tall in stature, 
dressed as a gentleman of the time, with silver knee- 
buckles, formal in manner, of quick temper, punctilious, 
very hospitable, a good neighbor, a member of no church, 
and bound by no creed, and in politics a federalist. In 
his latter days, when old age and total blindness shut him 
out from the busy world, when the political party of his 
active days had passed away, and new men who hated the 
names of Washington and Hamilton filled all the old 
familiar places in the town, the State, and the nation, he 
is said to have sometimes longed for a judicious use of 
the thunderbolts of the Almighty. Here, too, for much 
of his life lived his son Ebenezer Mix, universally known 
as Captain Eb., who made voyages to China and brought 
back to the merchant princes of the town, tea, spices, 
silks, china tea-sets, marked with the names of wealthy 
purchasers, and all the luxuries of the Orient. 



15 

Passing the house adjoining the burying-ground on 
the north, the home of this library and of Deacon Elijah 
Porter until his marriage in 1812, we come to the house 
built by Mr. Asahel Wadsworth, and which was reported 
unfinished in 1781 when the General Assembly, dissatis- 
fied with its treatment by the inn-keepers of Hartford, 
proposed to finish their winter session elsewhere, and re- 
quested the selectmen of Farmington to report what 
accommodation could be obtained here. The next house, 
from which the stage coach goes its daily rounds, was 
once the residence of Mr. Asa Andrews, and after 1826, of 
his son-in-law, the late Deacon Simeon Hart. In the 
brick shop next north, Mr. Andrews made japanned tin 
ware. He was the maker of those chandeliers, com- 
pounds of wood and tin, that long hung from the meeting- 
house ceiling. Crossing the street formerly known as the 
Little Back Lane, we come to the house built by Asa 
Andrews on land bought in 1 804, and where Deacon Sim- 
eon Hart for many years kept his well-known school. 
About twenty rods south, on the east side of that street, 
we come to the gambrel-roofed house built by Hon. 
Timothy Pitkin, LL.D., on a lot bought by him in 1788. 
He was a son of the Rev. Timothy Pitkin, a graduate of 
Yale, a lawyer by profession, five times speaker of the 
Legislature, a member of Congress from 1806 to 1820, 
and the author of a " Political and Civil History of the 
United States," of great value as a book of reference. 
Next south is the gambrel-roofed house formerly the 
home of Capt. Selah Porter, and immediately beyond this 
once stood the house of Deacon Martin Bull and of his 
father before him. 

Returning to the late residence of Deacon Simeon 
Hart, and crossing the now vacant lot where once flour- 
ished the famous inn of Amos Cowles, we reach the house 
with Ionic columns built by the late Major Timothy 



i6 

Cowles. Channcey Jerome, in his " History of the Amer- 
ican Clock Business," says, under date of 1815 : 

"I moved to the town of Farmington and went 

to work for Capt. Selah Porter for twenty dollars per month. We 
built a house for Major Timothy Cowles, which was then the best 
one in Farmington." 

The meeting-house next on our way need not detain us. 
He who would attempt to add to the graphic and exhaust- 
ive history by President Porter would be presumptuous 
indeed. The next house of brick was built by Gad 
Cowles within the century, and the three-story house of 
Dr. Wheeler on the corner, by Jonathan Cowles in 1799. 

Crossing the road up the mountain, we find on the 
corner the square house with the pyramidal roof and the 
chimney in the center owned and occupied by the Rev. 
Samuel Whitman during his ministry. Parts, if not the 
whole, of the building are much older than its well-pre- 
served walls would indicate. Tradition says the kitchen 
was built out of the remains of the old meeting-house, 
and the Rev. William S. Porter, who knew more about 
the history of the town than any man who has ever lived 
or is likely to live, says that the house, probably the front, 
was built by Cuff Freeman, a colored man of considerable 
wealth, of course after the death of Mr. Whitman. 

Leaving the main street and ascending the hill to the 
east, we come at the dividing line between the grounds 
about Miss Porter's schoolhouse and the late residence of 
Rev. T. K. Fessenden to the site of the house of Col. 
Noadiah Hooker, known as the " Old Red College " dur- 
ing the days when his son, Deacon Edward, there fitted 
Southern young men for college. Commander Edward 
Hooker of the United States Navy sends me a plan of the 
old house, which he of course well remembers. He says, 
" the part marked kitchen was floored with smooth, flat 
mountain stones, and had a big door at the eastern end, 



17 

and originally at each end, and my father used to say that 
when his father was a boy, they used to drive a yoke of 
oxen with a sled load of wood into one door and up to the 
big fireplace, then unload the wood upon the fire and 
drive the team out of the other door." Of the building 
of the house on the corner eastward, we have the most 
minute account from the time when in January, 1 8 1 1 , 
Capt. Luther Seymour drew the plan to the 25th of May, 
1 8 12, when Deacon Hooker took possession with his 
youthful bride. We even know the long list of those 
who helped raise the frame and of those who came too 
late for the raising but in time for the refreshments. 

But we must hurry back to the main street, lest with 
the rich materials at hand for an account of this most 
interesting man, we detain you beyond all proper bounds. 
The next old house to the north, the home of Col. Martin 
Cowles, was built and occupied by John Porter in 1784. 
Opposite the Savings Bank, the south part of the long 
house once the residence of Reuben S. Norton, merchant, 
was built by his grandfather, Thomas Smith, Sen., and 
the north third, by Deacon Thomas Smith, son of the 
latter. The next house, long the residence of Horace 
Cowles, Esq., was built by Samuel Smith, brother of the 
Deacon, in 1769, and is a good specimen of the style of 
houses erected by Capt. Judah Woodruff. The next old 
house, with the high brick basement, was built about 
1 797 by Capt. Luther Seymour, cabinet-maker and house- 
builder. Many choice pieces of old furniture in town, 
much prized by relic-hunters, were the work of his hand, 
but a large part of his work, thickly studded with brass 
nail heads, as was the fashion of the time, has been for- 
ever hidden from sight under the sods of the old burying- 
ground. Capt. Seymour was also librarian of one of the 
several libraries which divided the literary patronage of 
the village. The next house on a slight elevation stands 
3 



on a lot bought in 1769 by John Thomson, third in descent 
of that name, conspicuous about town with his leathern 
jacket and his pronounced opinions on Continental paper 
money. Here lived three generations of his descendants. 
Passing the house owned by Dr. Thomson, and before 
him by Mr. James K. Camp, and two other buildings, we 
come to a house built or largely renewed in 1808 by 
Nathaniel Olmsted, goldsmith and clockmaker. Here 
for twenty years were made the tall clocks bearing his 
name, which still correctly measure time with their sol- 
emn beat. He removed to New Haven to be near his 
brother, Professor Denison Olmsted, and there died in 
i860, most genial and loveable of men. His funeral dis- 
course was from the words, " Behold an Israelite indeed in 
whom is no guile." We will halt under the big elm tree, 
which overhangs the little house where Manin Curtis 
spent his life, long enough to say that his father, Sylvanus 
Curtis, in company with Phinehas Lewis in 1762, the year 
when Sylvanus was married, brought home from a swamp 
three elm trees. One was planted back of the Elm Tree 
Inn, one in front of the house of Mr. Curtis, and the third 
failed to live. The big elm tree is, therefore, 133 years 
old. On the corner eastward stands the house, much 
improved of late, built in 1786 and 1787 by Capt. Judah 
Woodruff for Major Peter Curtiss, an officer in the Rev- 
olutionary War, who removed to Granby in 1790, and 
was the first keeper of the reconstructed Newgate prison, 
leaving it in 1796 in declining health, and dying in 1797. 
Omitting the other houses on the west side of High street, 
for want of time and information, we come to the house 
lately owned by Selah Westcott, built by Major Samuel 
Dickinson on a lot bought by him in 18 13. Major Dick- 
inson was a house-builder, and when the Farmington 
canal was opened, he commanded the first packet boat 
which sailed southward from our wharves on the 10th of 



19 

November, 1828, on which a six-year-old boy, afterward a 
gallant U. S. naval officer in the late war, made his first 
voyage, sailing as far south as the old South Basin. He 
writes me : " Long live the memory of the old ' James Hill- 
house ,' and her jolly Captain Dickinson, who was not only 
a royal canal boat captain, but a famous builder, whose 
work still stands before you in the ' Old Red Bridge,' one 
of the best and most substantially built bridges of Con- 
necticut." On the northeast corner of the intersection of 
High street with the road to New Britain, long stood the 
house of Capt. Joseph Porter, one of the three houses on 
the east side of High street, with much projecting upper 
stories and conspicuous pendants, built about 1700. This 
was moved some rods up the hill when Mr. Franklin 
Woodford built his new house, and was burned on the 
evening of January 15, 1886. So there remains but one of 
the three houses, the one bought by Rev. Samuel Whit- 
man for his son, Elnathan, in 1735, and is the same house 
sold' by John Stanley, Sen., to Capt. Ebenezer Steel in 
1720. Descending to the low ground on the north and 
rising again, we come to the gambrel-roofed house where 
lived Dr. Eli Todd from 1 798 until his removal to Hart- 
ford in 1 819. Of this eminent man you will find appreci- 
ative notices in the two addresses of President Porter and 
111 the article on the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane 
by Dr. Stearns in the Memorial History of Hartford 
County. He will probably be longest remembered as the 
first superintendent of the Connecticut Retreat for the 
Insane in Hartford, where his system of minimum re- 
straint and kind treatment opened a new era for suffering 
humanity. At the northern end of High street, facing 
the road to the river, we make our last stop at the house 
of Mrs. Barney, built by Capt. Judah Woodruff about 
1805 for Phinehas Lewis. Between this house and the 
place from which we set out, there stands no house, old or 



20 

new, to detain us longer. Thanking you for the patience 
with which you have endured our long walk through the 
village streets, I am reminded that it is time we parted 
company with the old worthies whom we have called up 
before us for the entertainment of an idle hour, remem- 
bering that in times gone by they were wont to hale 
before his Excellency the Governor such as, having assem- 
bled themselves together, refused to disperse until after 
nine of the clock. 



